Pete Buttigieg offered a dose of reality for viewers on Fox, pointing out the lies and “cult of personality” of Donald Trump. The Biden transportation secretary, when asked about President Joe Biden’s fitness for office, turned the question around and cast doubt on Trump’s fitness to serve.
Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream asked Buttigieg whether Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumed Democratic nominee, “was aware of how [Biden] was doing” before he made the decision to step down from the presidential race. Buttigieg acknowledged Biden’s age but pivoted to criticize Trump.
“Unlike Republicans — right — who in Trump’s personality cult will take a look at Donald Trump and say he’s perfectly fine, even though he seemed unable to tell the difference between Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, even though he’s rambling about electrocuting sharks and Hannibal Lecter, even though he is clearly older and stranger than he was when America got to know him, they say he’s strong as an ox, leaps tall buildings in a single bound. We don’t have that kind of warped reality on our side,” Buttigieg said.
Buttigieg went on to say that in stepping aside, Biden “made one of the most difficult decisions a president could make — ever” and “did something that I don’t think Donald Trump could even conceive of doing, which is putting his own interests aside for the country.”
He also highlighted the trail of broken promises Trump has made: “He didn’t keep his promise of six percent economic growth. He didn’t keep his promise to drain the swamp. Even before the pandemic, America went into a manufacturing recession … He broke his promise to pass an infrastructure bill, right? He said he would do that; he failed to do it. The Biden-Harris administration got it done.”
Buttigieg continued, “He even broke his promise to that Jan. 6 mob when he said, ‘I will be at your side when you march down to the Capitol.’ But he actually did keep two promises: He kept his promise to destroy the right to choose in this country, and he kept his promise on tax cuts for the rich.”
When Bream interjected to say that Trump “did say he wanted to get rid of Roe v. Wade, but again, sent it to the states where they are hashing this out.”
“And empowered the states to eliminate women’s access to abortion and also, as you know, the Republican Party continues to be interested in a national abortion ban,” Buttigieg responded.
“Which [Trump] has disavowed completely,” Bream said.
“Yeah, he’s disavowed a lot of things,” Buttigieg said. “Because he lies all the time.”
It’s notable that Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s policy proposals for the next Republican administration, which was authored by many former Trump administration officials, calls for eliminating abortion access nationwide in addition to restricting reproductive health care. It proposes rolling back the FDA approval for abortion medications, calling them “the single greatest threat to unborn children.” It also would severely limit emergency contraceptive access, including IUDs and morning-after pills. Not only that, it would limit in vitro fertilization and surrogacy and employ the federal government in “abortion surveillance.”
The project paints a cruel, far-right vision of America, advocating for broad sweeping policy change, including rolling back climate change regulations, eviscerating the Environmental Protection Agency, and increasing fossil fuel production on public land. And it promises to enforce strict limits on immigration and to restrict eligibility for asylum claims while eliminating visas for immigrants who are victims of crime and human trafficking. Additionally, it proposes policies that would allow discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals in the legal, social, and medical spheres.
Last year, a top Project 2025 official claimed that Trump was “very bought in” on its policy ideas, but earlier this month, that same official claimed that the idea Trump is linked to the project is a “hoax.” The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, has selected a Project 2025 author as its platform policy director.
Trump has claimed to “know nothing” about Project 2025, but as Buttigieg so clearly stated, “He lies all the time.”
